20100808
This Day

Abuja — The Independent National Electoral Commission yesterday said it will engage 360,000 personnel for the compilation of the voters register for the 2011 general election.

INEC chairman Prof. Attahiru Jega disclosed this while receiving members of the Zimbabwean Armed Forces who came to understudy what the commission is doing to hold credible elections in the country.

The commission is targeting about 70 million voters in the voters registration exercise that will see at least three officers managing each of the 120,000 registration centres nationwide, which will thereafter serve as polling stations.

Also, Jega has promised that the 2011 election results will be released in a timely manner, signaling a departure from the past practice of delays in the release of results.

The leader of the Zimbabwean group, Brig. General Thomas Monyo, in his speech said the group was at INEC to understudy geo-political related issues.

The Zimbabwean officers sought to know the commission's view about international observers; if the commission is empowered to regulate election coverage by the media; if the commission has the mechanism to handle electoral disputes; and the time line for the release of election results.Jega told his guests that research has shown that elections conducted in the past were predicated on faulty voters register.

He acknowledged that the present management of INEC was demanding sums of the money considered astronomical for the conduct of the 2011 elections because of the limited time to discharge some of the pertinent functions expected of it before and during elections.

"The credibility of the old voters register is near zero. There are 120, 000 polling units and we have to deploy 120,000 data capturing machines to all of these polling units.

"It could have been done otherwise, but because of the time limit, we have to follow this process.

"Voters registration involves a lot of time and we have the challenges of time, logistics, funding, training of officials and voters education, and these operations have to be done simultaneously," the INEC boss said.

The INEC chairman said international observers would work with the guidelines given to them by INEC. "We will define the framework for international observers," he said.

On the release of results, Jega said results will be released earlier than in the past. "If results, for example with the presidential election in the past took five days before release, it will take half of those days for the commission to release such results," Jega said.